Aquafaba: Magical Egg Replacer for Vegan Meringue Recipes and Beyond

Aquafaba is a vegan egg replacer that’s changing the world of vegan cooking. Not only does aquafaba replace egg in recipes like a dream, it’s basically free. Here’s a guide to getting started with this magical vegan egg replacer!

Vegan meringue is just one of the awesome uses for aquafaba – the juice that you’d normally drain and toss from cooked beans. This discovery is kind of revolutionizing vegan cooking, and it’s beautiful.

Aquafaba seems to be the name the vegan community has landed on for bean juice. It certainly has a better ring to it than bean juice, doesn’t it?

The liquid from certain canned beans has the right balance of proteins to do a lot of the things that eggs do in a recipe.

Folks have been using it to make all kinds of vegan meringue recipes: pies, cookies, cakes. But there are some other cool ways to use this stuff, too.

I have shared a couple of my own recipes using aquafaba, and there are so many ways to use this stuff. It’s a brand new discovery, so folks are still testing, experimenting, and creating amazing vegan recipes with this all natural, inexpensive egg replacer.

Using Bean Liquid as an Egg Replacer

You can use the liquid from canned or home cooked beans to make aquafaba. I’ve been seeing the best results from chickpeas and white beans, but folks have also used red bean, black bean, and pinto bean liquid to replace eggs.

If you’re using the liquid from homemade beans, you’ll want to simmer it on the stove until it thickens to an almost eggwhite-like consistency. With canned beans, you can use it as-is.

The quick and dirty for making aquafaba egg replacer: For things like cookies, cakes, and breads, three tablespoons of chickpea or white bean juice is all you need to replace an egg. If your recipe calls for a large egg, use four tablespoons.

I used aquafaba as an egg replacer in my waffle iron brownies recipe. You guys, it worked like a charm! For this use, you don’t even need to beat the liquid. Just add it straight.

Making Vegan Meringue with Aquafaba

For a vegan meringue recipe, your ratio of bean liquid to sugar should be around one part liquid to 1 1/3 parts sugar. You can get away with 1 1/4 parts sugar, though.

Start low – you can always add more sugar if you’re not getting the stiff peaks you want! I see recipes that say to add the sugar after you have soft peaks, but I had success adding most of the sugar right from the get, then adding more as needed.

I know – this is a lot of sugar. Meringues are mostly sugar, and so far no one’s found a way around that. Whether you use egg or aquafaba, sugar plus the protein is what gives you stiff, shiny peaks.

Folks are still testing things like quiche, strata, and other recipes where eggs play a bigger role. I haven’t played with aquafaba quiche yet, but it looks like some people are having success there using aquafaba, chickpea flour, and black salt. I’ll definitely post if I come up with my own aquafaba vegan quiche!

How to Freeze Aquafaba

You can freeze aquafaba. It will keep for a few days in the fridge, but to store it for longer, you can keep it in the freezer. To freeze:

Pour into ice cube trays.

Pop out the frozen cubes and transfer to an airtight container to freeze long term.

Your aquafaba cubes will keep for about six months in the freezer. Defrost overnight in the fridge or in the microwave. Since one standard ice cube tray section holds two tablespoons of liquid, you can use two aquafaba ice cubes for one large egg.

OK, so those are the basics, but with something so new, it’s nice to have recipes to jump off of. Below are vegan meringue recipes and then some examples of other ways you can use aquafaba.

Vegan Meringue Recipes

Using aquafaba to make vegan meringue was how this all started, so I wanted to share a few vegan meringue recipes that folks have been making first.

Beyond Meringue: Recipes Using Aquafaba as Egg Replacer

I am floored by some of these uses, y’all. Seriously.

Somer at Vedged Out wanted to see how aquafaba worked as a straight up egg replacer, no whipping. And she made the best chocolate chip cookies EVER. This is the recipe that proved that straight, unwhipped bean liquid could replace eggs in baking.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Can you make the “meringue” with anything other than egg beaters? Like a good blender, immersion blender or something else? How long do you need to blend if the consistency is like egg whites before blending? Thanks.

Just tried aquafaba to replace beaten egg whites in a Maine melt-in-your-mouth Blueberry Cake, a traditional recipe from a local Historical Society. It was always fantastic with egg whites, but once we became vegan, the egg substitutes never worked to achieve the melt-in-your-mouth texture. I was amazed at how well the aquafaba achieves the texture of beaten egg whites! I used Vegg to replace the yolks. It wasn’t “perfect” – but pretty close for a first try! I used 4 T of aquafaba per egg white because I wanted a moist cake, abut next time I will use 3 T.

Hello
I am a vegan so all my recipes are eggless but I find the texture to be a bit dense. Can I add in the Aquafaba to my eggless recipes to make them more light and fluffy even though the recipes does not ask for eggs?

That’s a good question! I’ve only used it in pretty standard baked goods, but I can speak to that. It works great as a binder in cookies and cakes, except angel food cake. I also used it in vegan ‘crab’ cakes and for breading tofu, and it worked out like gangbusters. I hope this helps!

hahaha… Well, it’s not for one particular recipe. We are a family of 7 with multiple food allergies/intolerances. Recently, 3 of us were told to avoid egg white after food sensitivity testing. Considering we already have to a multitude of other foods to avoid, I was trying to figure out how in the world I could still make things without eggs. So this is a recent world of learning for me. I’ve tried the flax/chia mix and it didn’t work super well with the pancakes I made at all. I tried baking soda/vinegar and that wasn’t tasty. I’ve been told some substitutes work better in some things than others so I’m still experimenting. ;) So I really appreciate the help! Now I have to figure out what to serve for breakfast on the 3-4 days per week we were having eggs!

Yeah, it’s definitely true that different subs work in different places. For breakfast, maybe tofu scrambles or overnight oats? My husband also really likes grit bowls in the morning with sliced avocado on top. Let me know if I can help further!

Alas!!! I tried a muffin recipe and a pumpkin roll recipe with this method last night and neither worked! I was so sad! What might I have done wrong? They tasted fine but they did not rise at all. I have pictures of both. Thoughts?

Salted is fine. You might back off on the other salt in your recipe, but I have used salted even to make meringue cookies with no problems. If you’re watching your salt, you can definitely find unsalted canned chickpeas, though!

I would like to use the water from the home made cooking beans. What will be the garbanzo bean – water ratio ? And also what about using chickpea flour water ? Any suggestions Thank you for sharing your awesome recipes ! ????????

Hmm I haven’t used the water from homecooked beans, but you can for sure. Not sure of the ratio. I’d cook them the way you would normally, but you can also search the Facebook group I mention in the post. Folks there have done this for sure!

I’ve used the homemade bean water with great success…just cook beans as you normally would & drain into a jar for numerous uses. I usually just cover brand by 1/2 to 1 inch depending on how many good of beans in trying to cook & salt as I normally would. Just made mayo today & it rocks!

I haven’t personally used pinto, but I hear that it works. I would measure the liquid and start with 1 part sugar to 1 part liquid, then add sugar by the tablespoon as needed. Different beans yield different amounts of liquid.

Trackbacks

[…] 1 egg = 3-4 tablespoons of the liquid from canned beans. I use 4 tablespoons if the recipe calls for a large egg, 3 if it doesn’t specify. You can learn more about using bean liquid (aka aquafaba) in baking here. […]

[…] You’ll notice that in the instructions, it specifies not to rinse the chickpeas. That’s because the liquid in that can of beans, called aquafaba, has a lot of properties similar to eggs in cooking. That little bit of aquafaba that clings to the unrinsed chickpeas adds moisture and a little bit of crunch to the finished recipe. Read more about the magical powers of aquafaba here! […]

[…] binder. I thought it would be super fun to convert her recipe to one for roasted chickpeas and use aquafaba from the beans as the egg replacer. Something about that seemed super fun to me. I guess […]

[…] GoWISE isn’t vegan, but it is SO easy to veganize. Just use 1/2 cup plus a tablespoon of aquafaba instead of the 3 eggs, and use vegan margarine instead of butter. And roll in vegan sugar at the […]

[…] Not only are these healthy and delicious, they are super simple to make. You only need three ingredients and about 20 minutes to make them in your air fryer. One of the ingredients – aquafaba – may be new to you. Don’t worry! It’s just the liquid from canned beans. Stick a bowl under a colander, open a can of white beans, dump them into the colander, and voila! Your bowl fills up with precious, precious aquafaba. You can read more about aquafaba’s magic here. […]

[…] – discovered by food magician Goose Wohlt – is magical stuff. You can read the article I wrote about it on my personal site last year for more info and ideas on how to cook with it. If you’re wondering how aquafaba mayo, like […]

[…] a bit trickier, but you don’t need expensive egg replacers. For cookies, brownies, breads etc, replace your eggs with the liquid from canned beans (no, really!). You can save the beans for another […]

[…] bit trickier, but you don’t need expensive egg replacers. For cookies, brownies, breads etc, replace your eggs with the liquid from canned beans (no, really!). You can save the beans for another […]

[…] Aquafaba frosting tastes so similar to traditional meringue that you might not even guess the switch. It’s crazy! My only complaint about using aquafaba in my vegan frosting was its shelf life. Even after adding cream of tartar and adjusting the typical aquafaba recipe to use powdered sugar rather than granulated sugar (the corn starch in powdered sugar helps to dry out the aquafaba), my vegan meringue frosting lasted about 20 minutes on the counter or about two hours in the refrigerator before collapsing. Aquafaba’s shelf life makes this vegan frosting a great candidate for snack-time and family desserts, but not a good idea for parties where it might need to sit out for a bit. (Of course, this doesn’t apply to other uses of aquafaba like baked meringue cookies.) […]